What Exactly Is PPC on Amazon?
Whenever a customer searches for something on Amazon they will be shown both sponsored (paid) results as well as organic results.
You can see an example of a sponsored result in the photo on the left and an organic result on the right.
In order to create sponsored ads you need to utilize PPC, which stands for Pay-Per-Click. It’s an auction-style system where you can bid on keywords, competitors, and categories.
You’ll only pay your bid price when someone clicks on your ad (which is where the pay-per-click name comes from).
Intro to the Three Types of PPC
To clarify, there are actually two main categories of advertising you can utilize on Amazon: PPC and DSP. but in this article, we’ll be focusing on the PPC (Pay-Per-Click) side of things.
Within PPC there are 3 kinds of ad types.
Sponsored Product Ads
This is where most Amazon sellers get started and even after you’ve gotten into the other ad types Sponsored Products will likely still make up the majority of your ads strategy.
Remember the purple notebook from earlier? That’s a Sponsored Product ad.
Sponsored Product ads allow you to create campaigns for individual products by targeting relevant keywords, competitor products or categories.
Shoppers will see your ad when they use a search term that is relevant to your target. You can learn more about the difference between keywords and search terms here.
Benefits
These ads show up all across the customer’s shopping journey. Including:
- On product detail pages
- Within search results
- On the right side of search results
- On the bottom of search results
Meaning you have lots of opportunities to reach potential customers.
Sponsored Brand Ads
These are sometimes called “headline search ads”.
There are several formats that you can choose from for Sponsored Brands like including your logo with 3 featured products (like the pic above) and there’s even an option to include video.
These ads can appear in 3 places on a desktop device.
- Above search results
- To the left of search results
- Below search results
Benefits
Sponsored Brand Ads are a great way to capture a customer’s attention before they’ve actually clicked into a product page. Since you can include your logo they’re also a good way to potentially increase brand awareness.
Sponsored Display Ads
These ads are special (and a bit more advanced than the other two) because they allow you to target customers both on and off Amazon.
On Amazon, you’ll see these ads in these places.
- Product Detail Pages
- Customer Review Pages
Benefits This ad type allows you to target customers based on their interests as well as re-target customers based on their shopping behavior.
Which Ad Type is Right For You?
Cool, so how do I know which one I should use?
This all depends on your goals for your product and your budget. But no matter what, we recommend becoming familiar with Sponsored Product ads first.
Not only because they have a ton of potential to make lots of money for your business but without a solid understanding of Sponsored Product ads it will be difficult to incorporate the other ad types into your overall strategy.
Which ad types are you currently including in your advertising strategy?
Did anything in this article spark your curiosity or bring up a question? Comment below or email us at Howdy@PPCFarm.com. We love talking about PPC!
